


From Zanzibar to Barclay Square

by Ceares



Category: Live Free or Die Hard (2007), Unbreakable (2000)
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-18
Updated: 2013-01-18
Packaged: 2017-11-25 21:51:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/643334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ceares/pseuds/Ceares
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Yet another contribution to my goal to 'write <i>all</i> the lfdh fic before the new movie comes out' .</p>
    </blockquote>





	From Zanzibar to Barclay Square

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another contribution to my goal to 'write _all_ the lfdh fic before the new movie comes out' .

‘Why don’t you go out to the field office, Matt? It’s a simple job, you can handle it with your eyes closed, Matt. You’d be doing us a big favor, Matt.” Matt ducks behind the file cabinet, still muttering under his breath, fingers moving at lightning speed across his keyboard as he attempts to lock down access to the top floors of the building. Those floors hold the kind of information black ops were invented for and it can only be accessed from the terminals up there. You’d think the seven armed guards that patrolled the lower floors would be deterrent enough to keep anyone away -- you’d think. But Matt knows better. When the universe can’t drop a building on McClane it settles -- unfortunately, these days it usually settles on Matt. That’s why, five minutes ago, a bunch of heavily armed guys had driven a tank through the side of the building. A fucking tank. Who does that?

The few employees the building holds headed for a safe-room the minute things went to hell, SOP. Except Matt, lucky guy that he is, had been on the other side of the building, with a whole shitload of bad guys and a tank -- did he mention the tank? Between him and the safe room. So he’d hunkered down and gone to work. There’s yelling and gunfire around him and he tries not to feel guilty that he’s not out there in the thick of it. John had insisted on self defense lessons and had dragged Matt to the shooting range over loud protestations, but that didn’t make him any kind of expert -- and the guys out there with guns on both sides were professionals. The best thing he could do was what he _was_ a pro at. Still, he takes a second to wish McClane was there before he goes back to doing what he’s doing.

Of course that’s when the bad guys notice him, probably because he keeps slamming the door shut on their attempts to access the security terminal. Frankly, their hacker sucks. He’s dragged from behind his shelter and there’s a gun pointed at his head and orders to undo whatever ‘the fuck you did, smart ass’. And it’s pretty damn sad that he can’t say he’s never been in this position before. It would be really, really fucking fantastic if McClane was here right now, but he’s not and it’s up to Matt to be ‘that guy’. He lets his body relax, go almost limp until he’s a weight on the guy holding him. The guy tries to adjust his grip and Matt uses that moment to swing his Macbook as hard as he can, wincing as he hears a double crack, one from his baby and one from the nose of the goon holding him. The guy yells and steps back, letting Matt go, but he’s not out and for once, Matt regrets the whole ‘light yet powerful’ thing. Right now he’d love to have one of those heavy ass dinosaurs. Matt swings again, before the guy can get himself together, hard enough that the guy drops, head cracking against the hard tile. He doesn’t get up.

Matt turns, looking for another hidey hole and taking in the chaos around him when he gets a good look at what’s actually going on, and “Holy fuck!” Matt had been kidding, wishful thinking at the most. He sure as hell hadn’t expected McClane to pop up out of nowhere and start doing what he did best, which was wreck shit and, well, fuck up the bad guy’s plans, but really Matt figured that was kind of a bonus and John just liked blowing shit up. He’s learned all his lessons so he ducks back down out of the way and lets John work.

By the time everything is over, the bad guys are all down and the few remaining guards are tending to each other. John wanders outside, no doubt checking for additional threats. Matt runs after him.

“Shit!Shit!Shit!” He flexes his hands in an attempt to quell the shaking. “I know, I know, breath.” Even after everything, Matt still doesn’t see how John stays so calm when people were trying to kill them. He’s never going to master that ‘stoic on the outside, supposedly quaking on the inside’ persona John maintains. The only thing that works to smother the sound of his brain screaming “fuck! we’re going to die!” is to direct his mind somewhere else, which...

“What are you doing here anyway? How did you even know where I was.” He narrows his eyes at John. “What the hell, dude did you lo-jack me or something?” Matt totally won’t be surprised if that was the case. “I’d be really pissed at you if you hadn’t saved my life _again_ ”

John hasn’t said anything but he’s looking at Matt with the same quizzical expression he’d worn for nearly the whole first year they were together. “What? Okay, fine.” He grabs John and pulls him down for a quick, smacking kiss. “Thank you.”

He moves in for another kiss when John pushes him back and hurriedly wipes his mouth.

“What the fuck?” Okay, John wasn’t big on PDA but ‘the hell?

“Whoa! Kid. Look, I’m not who you think I am.”

“John.”

“I don’t know who this John is. My name is David, David Dunn.”

Matt freezes and then really takes in the picture in front of him. The guy looks exactly like John, except Matt can see now he’s a little thinner. He is wearing a baseball cap but sticking out from the sides is a buzz of dark hair, but mostly, the difference is in the way he carries himself. John goes through the world with fire at his back and he holds himself like he has giant brass balls -- which he does. This guy -- David -- is almost meek.

“Holy shit! Wow, were you adopted? Or do you have like an identical cousin or something you don’t know about? Which I guess you wouldn’t know if you didn’t know, right? Just...” Matt grabs his phone from his bag and scrolls through the photos till he finds one of himself, Lucy and John at a Nets game. He hands the phone to David who glances down at it.

“Huh.”

“See! That’s what I mean. That’s my...John’s huh.”

David hands him back the phone, flinching and throwing a hand up in front of his face when Matt snaps a picture of him.

“Hey!”

Matt shakes his head. “John hates taking pictures too.” Matt sends the picture to Lucy and less than thirty seconds later his phone dings.

_did u promise him kinky sex 2 get him in the hat?_

_not ur dad_

_no way, pops!_

Lucy and Jack think it’s hilarious to call Matt, Pops. The looks they get when they do it in public are still enough to set them giggling. After five years, John still sometimes gets demoted from Dad, but Matt is always Pops. Lucy had told him it was obvious John was in it for the long haul. “Dad doesn’t do temporary. In thirty years, there’s just been my mom, and you.”

 

Matt can hear sirens, finally, in the distance. Top secret government installation is one thing but thirty minute emergency response time is just ridiculous.

David frowns. “I’ve to get out of here, the police will be here soon.”

“Wait!” Matt grabs his arm. “You can’t flee the scene. One, it’s illegal. Two, I’d get my butt handed to me at home. John is a cop. Three, the government is going to want to...” Matt realizes he isn’t doing anything to encourage David to stay and he can’t help it, the part of him that still hates the idea of being ‘the man’ popped up.

“Okay, get the hell out of here.” He’ll come up with something. A fear based, gibbering, babble attack ought to work. These guys didn’t know him like John or Bowman, so they should buy the helpless computer nerd act.

He watches as David ducks around the building and just sort of disappears, which is a neat trick. It doesn’t matter though, there’s no way Matt isn’t finding him again. His finger is hitting his speed dial one even as he heads back into the building.

“John, first of all it was _not_ my fault.”


End file.
